It was apparently unfathomable to Dr. Mayor (pronounced My-or) that someone could actually live in New York. Which is perhaps why she asked me if I flew out specifically to get “the procedure” done. The procedure being a breast augmentation. I guess this town was just so small (along with the tits in it) that she assumed there wouldn’t be any plastic surgeon’s office within the vicinity that I could actually go to, so I would have instead opted to “fly out” to New York “merely” to get my tits done. Like I was some sort of “la-di-da” celebrity with the means (and gall) to perform such a decadent act.

But no, I informed her, “I used to live there.” Once upon a time… And as I said it, I imagined how many other people must say it frequently to those who lived in some small town. As though to gloat, to prove that they didn’t “really” belong in a place like this, and that they were slumming it out of the goodness of their hearts. Anyway, I tried to say it as unportentously as I could. Nonetheless, she looked at me strangely, as though vaguely registering some arcane truth about my entire “personage.” 

Looking me up and down with a new kind of appraisal in her eyes, she returned, “Oh. I see.” It was uttered in a clipped tone that revealed nothing… other than a strange contempt for me now that I had confessed to being essentially contaminated as a result of living in New York. No matter how long ago it might have been. It was actually sort of refreshing to encounter someone who wasn’t charmed by it. What with most people I mentioned it to practically swooning over the prospect of what it would be like to swim in said cesspool. 

I had come to the appointment for a standard-issue physical, but in order to get a referral to a plastic surgeon (who, yes, would be located in a far-off locale), I also had to show Dr. Mayor my tit. The one with the silicone implant that had very clearly moved in such a way as to make it sag much more noticeably than the other beside it. I was getting worried that it was also going to burst open and leak fluid inside of me… as so many men had in the past. 

Before I could get her to give the time of day to my tit, however, she was very concerned with “administering” an unwanted pap smear. Even after I reiterated to her that I was already told the last one I got was supposed to provide results that were “good” for three years. “No,” she said. “We better go ahead and give you one.” 

So there I am, envisioning myself as a turkey being stuffed while her hand is up my vag (after shoving a speculum up there first, of course), feeling around and pressing my stomach at the same time. I’d never felt so much like an animal. This was a positively veterinary experience. It took weeks for my body to even remotely forget about the sensation of that incident. 

When she finally did get around to looking more closely at my breast so I could finagle the referral that I really came for under the guise of “needing” a physical (“needed” like a hole in one’s head), she held it in her hand and bounced it up and down. “So you got this done in New York, you say?”

I nodded.

“Wow, they really don’t know what the fuck they’re doing over there, huh?”

I shrugged, immune to her cursing in a professional setting perhaps because of my tenure in New York. “A lot of people think the opposite.” 

“A lot of people are missing a part.” 

And I was suddenly surprised at how open her tone was with me. I didn’t dislike it, replying, “No argument there.” 

“I think what makes a place like New York dangerous is that people—especially people seeking medical care—assume that, because someone is working in a ‘prestigious’ town, then they must be ‘the best’ of ‘the best.’ When, in fact, they have to be the shystiest of the shystiest.” 

I didn’t know where she was going with her thought process, but I wasn’t one to interrupt, so I let her continue, “Medical practice in a town like New York turns a lot of doctors unscrupulous because they have to be. Too much competition. They try to stand out by cutting corners where they can. And it looks to me like someone cut—pardon the word—a corner on your breast… I’m not even going to ask how much you paid to have this done.” 

“Right. I’d rather not say.” 

“But I will ask what made you want to live in a place like that to begin with.” 

The question seemed more than a little absurd, considering how many millions flocked to that city just for a chance at “making it.” I frowned and offered, “You know, you’re young. You take a chance.” 

“Did your ‘chance’ pay off?” 

“I mean I ‘made it’ there. But then… that’s all it was. I was just living there like I would be anywhere else. There was nothing special about it after the novelty wore off. It was like you pulled back the curtain and the Wizard of Oz was just a discombobulated old man. Life became ordinary. And I guess I felt cheated in some way by the myth of New York.” 

Dr. Mayor was practically salivating now. If she had a dick, I wouldn’t have been shocked if she whipped it out and started beating it as a result of her arousal over what I had said. 

“Yes, yes. I knew it!” She then ran out the door and brought in the receptionist who had greeted me when I first arrived. “Now tell this to my best employee. She’s trying to move there in a month, and she has to be stopped.” Meanwhile, both my tits were out. A clinical setting having rendered them sexless. In New York, of course, the receptionist—male or female—would have easily gotten a hard-on.